Simple and to the point. This cease-fire was declared from a position of strength.

Yes, and there is some conceivable situation in which it would be the right thing to do to push your mother under a bus. Not logically impossible just far-fetched enough that it’s not something normal people ever think about. So when you see someone constantly talking about how theoretically it could be for the best if Mom was run down in traffic, you start to wonder….

Can we bomb the USA now or do we have to wait till a few more civil rights disappear and a few more elections are rigged?

The question of the temptation to deploy overwhelming force just because you can is the elephant in brownie’s room here…

Fair point. Let’s restrict it to Yugoslavia and after, shall we?

Oh, but you are, Brownie.

ful·some –adjective
1. offensive to good taste, esp. as being excessive; overdone or gross: fulsome praise that embarrassed her deeply; fulsome décor.
2. disgusting; sickening; repulsive: a table heaped with fulsome mounds of greasy foods.

I don’t see the relevance of this scenario. The USSR was a strong state, had a history of belligerence, was known to be in the possession of vast quantities of WMD and efficient means to deliver them, and had explicitly made clear their enmity with the US.

This was the case for sixty years.

How does a weak state, with an uncertain WMD capacity at least three orders of magnitude smaller than the USSR’s in the very worst case, with the range of delivery limited at most to that of the SCUD, suddenly change the parameters extant for more than half a century previously?

April 1939:

Q5. Is the British Government right in following a policy of giving military guarantees to preserve the independence of small European nations? (Note: this means Poland).

Yes 73% No 15%.

August 1939:

Q6. If Germany and Poland go to war over Danzig should we fulfil our pledge to fight on Poland’s side?

Yes 76%
No 14%

September 1939:

Q1. Should we continue to fight till Hitlerism goes?

Yes 89%
No 7%

All numbers rounded up: source Gallup (http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=3331)

The simple fact is that invading Germany in 1936 was not an option: the British people would not have gone for it. And yes, as you point out, the Americans would absolutely and definitely not have gone for it: it would have been Suez all over again. The Americans only backed war after they had been attacked themselves.

And in any case, it’s not at all clear that even if we had attacked Germany (or helped France to do so) that we would have won the ensuing war. France was defeated by Germany, don’t forget: why should things have been different in ‘36? The British had barely begun to rearm in 1936: by 1940 (when the war ‘really’ started) the British were in a fundamentally better position, militarily. And, in any case, in the depths of the ‘thirties there was no public support for war, and any government that proposed it would have been kicked out.

Your argument is too heavy with supposition for my liking. What if Dunkirk had happened in 1936, minus Churchill? And what trigger would the British have had in 1936 for going to war? Too many unknowns. Which is exactly the point.

And sudden mass-conversion to pacifism of the world business and political elites everywhere would produce exactly 0 corpses. Seems like a better option.

However, Brownie ignores the fact that on the Right large sections of the British political class were ‘appeasers’ because, essentially, they approved of Hitler’s programme.

I’m not ignoring anything, but neither am I purporting to present a fulsome account of all influences and facotrs. I’m merely making the point that it wasn’t only a belief that “we weren’t ready” that motivated a majority to oppose war with Nazi Germany in the mid-30s. I’m referring back to the ‘consequences of no war now’ theme that was discussed earlier. How much was appeasement and how much a genuine belief that major confrontation with Hitler could still be avoided is irrelvant to any positon I’m taking. It is at least arguable that a multi-lateral response to Hitler’s earlier agressions half a decade before the formal declaration of war would have produced fewer corpses than the war that ended in 1945.

To clarify, I’m not claiming certainty about any of this. I’m leaving that to others.

Further, it’s again at least arguable that an earlier intervention would necessarily qualify as “pre-emptive” war and render the allies “aggressors” given Hitler’s own breaches (militarization of the Rhineland, for example), but leaving this aside, what if the true dichotomy is:

a – War of self-defence fought 1939-45 producing 60 million dead, 2/3rds of whom are civilians.

or

b – Pre-emptive war fought 1936-1941 producing half that number of corpses

?

Do you plump for option one becasue option 2 has St. Augustine turning in his grave?

By the way, your penchant for using “decent” as a synonym for anybody who might disagree with you and pretence that there is a ‘decent’ line on subjects such as, for example, the Hitlerian threat and the economic climate in 1930s Britain, are some of the reasons why I normally avoid discussion with you.

It’s true that most British people bought into the ‘peace in our time’ stuff, but the invasion of Poland brought home to most people that the rise of Hitler would threaten British interests and that some form of military confrontation between the two Empires was probably inevitable.

You must be referring to the poll taken on September 2nd 1939 between the invasion of Poland (1st) and the British declaration of war (3rd). No, the point is that – and I’m prepared to be corrected by those who can do better that your sorry attempt to discredit – that as late as summer 1939 there was still no appetite for war amongst the British people. This is important only insofar as you believed a lack of public support for an earlier confrontation was important.

but if you are implying that there was not mass agreement in the US that action had to be taken against Japan after Pearl Harbour, again I’d like to see your source

Nope, and I suspect you know full well that this was not my point, which was that between 1939 and Dec 1941 there was no/fleeting majority support for US intervention in the war. Again, I’m happy to be corrected.

The lesson is that most right-minded people are less than thrilled at the prospect of war. I reckon this is generally a good thing, but I don’t think it is necessarily a useful barometer of whether a particular war has the required legitimacy, or indeed whether it can be said to be “just” and/or “moral”.

That really is me.

1. Democracy is an important good.
2. Dictatorships can only be replaced by democracy through military force from outside.
3. Much of the world is ruled by dictators.

From which it follows:

4. Lots more wars, please!